1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a robot apparatus and a control method thereof, and more particularly, is suitably applied to an entertainment robot.
2. Description of the Related Art
Such a method has been proposed that enables robots to call for help when the robots have troubles. Please refer to a non-patent document ““Humanoid Robot ROBOVIE” Debut by Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) at Everyday Robot Consortium”. Particularly refer to “Experiments on Human-Robot interactions”, Jul. 7, 2000, ASCII24, Web site URL: http://ascii24.com/news/i/topi/article/2000/07/17/610214-000.html (originally in Japanese).
Robot, however, cannot follows its own will and gets in trouble easily. A user will find the robot boring if the robot asks for help every time when the robot gets in trouble, and a user will feel that the robot is unintelligent when the robot gets in the same trouble in the same situation.
To ask for help, the robot had better overact. However, overacting is a meaningless if nobody is around the robot. Especially the bad situation for a robot with a low battery is accelerated. Therefore, we have to develop a robot and a method for controlling the robot taking its surroundings into consideration when the robot asks for help to the user. With this smart control the user can feel that the robot is intelligent and entertainment properties of the robot are improved.